Do we all agree now that UBI is the right thing to do?

[Philo Sofee]

So THEY decide how much anyoner gets, and when? And if one has an argument with them or disagrees with an action then is their paycheck cut off? I ABSOLUTELY DETEST THIS TOTAL CONTROL OF US. IT IS POSITIVELY ****SLAVERY**** They tell us WhAT to do or don't get our money. They tell us where to go or we don't get our money. We want to buy something and THEY say no, too expensive? THIS IS THE DEATH OF ALL FREEDOM. You're going to go along with the billionaires enslaving us?!?!? ARE YOU F*****G KIDDING?! Well why not let them build 20 AI centers in EVERY state and total takeover of ALL resources so they get richer and we get literally nothing.

Everyone needs to calm down around here. Looks like you, too. Remember. We're in a marathon.

Agreed, but I don't want a marathon of slavery and lost freedom and rights because some billionaire is a self appointed money funder of 350,000,000 other people. I'll make my own money thank you.

[Jersey Girl]

Everyone needs to calm down around here. Looks like you, too. Remember. We're in a marathon.

Agreed, but I don't want a marathon of slavery and lost freedom and rights because some billionaire is a self appointed money funder of 350,000,000 other people. I'll make my own money thank you.

I think we're gonna be okay.

[Gadianton]

So THEY decide how much anyoner gets, and when? And if one has an argument with them or disagrees with an action then is their paycheck cut off?

Well, like I said, I'm giving their narrative the benefit of the doubt. If AI takes all our jobs, then we would be quite lucky to get the 1,000 dollars a month. But I don't see that as realistic. How lucky we'd be if the price of a relative 1k a month was bought by good behavior towards the overlords.

Assuming that their own AI will develop such power, a bet I give small odds, then they will never give us a dime. The world will be divided up between AI warlords and their entire investment will revolve around defending themselves from each other, while the rest of the 99.999 percent humanity is squeezed into whatever parts of the world not currently needed for their efforts and left to fend for ourselves in pre-modern fashion. If we keep our cannibalism and self-destruction to ourselves, they leave us alone and let us starve or kill each other naturally. If we get any funny ideas and rise up, they send armies of robot dogs and drones to wipe out a few thousand at a time.

[Dr. Shades]

So THEY decide how much anyoner gets, and when? And if one has an argument with them or disagrees with an action then is their paycheck cut off? I ABSOLUTELY DETEST THIS TOTAL CONTROL OF US. IT IS POSITIVELY ****SLAVERY**** They tell us WhAT to do or don't get our money. They tell us where to go or we don't get our money. We want to buy something and THEY say no, too expensive? THIS IS THE DEATH OF ALL FREEDOM. You're going to go along with the billionaires enslaving us?!?!? ARE YOU F*****G KIDDING?! Well why not let them build 20 AI centers in EVERY state and total takeover of ALL resources so they get richer and we get literally nothing.

Are you forgetting? America is a farm, and we are someone else's property.

[ajax18]

Don’t they do this now? We just call it salary and wages paid for a job.

This is different. We won't have any jobs, and THEY will determine how much we get. I have no idea how that will work. What if they just do a flat rate of $1,000/month based on good behavior as THEY define it? Just an example. No overtime, no extra work available with side jobs etc. Just ONE way to get money, not based on skill or loyalty through time of sticking with a job, just on what THEY think you NEED. And if you do something they don't like, then no money for you this entire month. It's a nightmare scenario in my opinion.

I think even more people would be faking some kind of disability than we see now under such a system. How many people are going to go to work every day. How many people are going to fight through sickness and ailments out purely altruistic motives? I didn't think it possible but you might actually see more people gaming the social security/disability system than you see now.

[ajax18]

So THEY decide how much anyoner gets, and when? And if one has an argument with them or disagrees with an action then is their paycheck cut off?

Well, like I said, I'm giving their narrative the benefit of the doubt. If AI takes all our jobs, then we would be quite lucky to get the 1,000 dollars a month. But I don't see that as realistic. How lucky we'd be if the price of a relative 1k a month was bought by good behavior towards the overlords.

Assuming that their own AI will develop such power, a bet I give small odds, then they will never give us a dime. The world will be divided up between AI warlords and their entire investment will revolve around defending themselves from each other, while the rest of the 99.999 percent humanity is squeezed into whatever parts of the world not currently needed for their efforts and left to fend for ourselves in pre-modern fashion. If we keep our cannibalism and self-destruction to ourselves, they leave us alone and let us starve or kill each other naturally. If we get any funny ideas and rise up, they send armies of robot dogs and drones to wipe out a few thousand at a time.

Honest question Gad, what is different about the AI situation in the near future from the Luddites before the industrial revolution? Wouldn't the billionaire overlords just spend and invest their money they saved through AI, thus opening up new jobs and industries for human beings?

[Gadianton]

In my grandfather’s childhood, the poverty line was not having shoes. Today it’s maybe not having a smart phone.

Not sure about that, I think today all kids have multiple pairs of shoes and a smart phone and probably three TVs, but they may not have secure housing, health care, or food. I remember thinking a couple years back when I picked of a 35" TV for 49$ how tired I am of TVs and I'd rather go back to a TV being a major purchase and the definer of wealth rather than a house with more than ten square feet of yard.

The wealthy few will have to outbid all those people—and they will. So I expect that a chasm will form between the goods that everyone gets to have, and those that are only available to the elite.

Well, the things available to the elite in communist countries exist only due to capitalist countries producing them. But what would count as status post-scarcity once the richest country goes UBI?

A “high” UBI may not be exactly like serfdom or slavery or Communism,

It may be pretty close. Had Russia not made the insane decision to go to war, they had a reasonably sustainable system. Basics like energy, food, and housing are pretty cheap. Having one brand of car and vacuum cleaner has some major sustainability advantages.

As a reminder though, the assumption of my post was that Elon and his AI crowd are justified in believing AGI is around the corner -- that he can produce a cheap robot that can walk into any place of business and fulfill the jobs of any employee. And so assuming there are no jobs left, is there any good choice aside from UBI?

[Gunnar]

Does anyone else here remember that some form of UBI was once seriously proposed by the highly conservative GOP President, Richard M. Nixon?

In 1969 President Richard Nixon was on the verge of implementing a basic income for poor families in America. It promised to be a revolutionary step – had the President not changed his mind at the last minute. This is the incredible and largely forgotten tale of just how close the U.S. came to stamping out poverty altogether.

t was the summer of ’69, the end of the decade that brought us flower power and Woodstock, rock ’n’ roll and Vietnam, Martin Luther King and a feminist revolution. It was a time when everything seemed possible, even a conservative president strengthening the welfare state.

Richard Nixon was not the most likely candidate to pursue the old utopian dream, but then history sometimes has a strange sense of humor. The same man who was forced to resign after the Watergate scandal in 1974 had been on the verge, in 1969, of enacting an unconditional income for all poor families. It would have been a massive step forward in the War on Poverty, guaranteeing a family of four $1,600 a year, equivalent to roughly $10,000 in 2016.

First, however, some trial runs were needed. Tens of millions of dollars were budgeted to provide a basic income for more than 8,500 Americans in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Iowa, North Carolina, Indiana, Seattle, and Denver in what were also the first-ever large-scale social experiments to distinguish experimental and control groups. The researchers wanted answers to three questions:

1. Would people work significantly less if they receive a guaranteed income?

2. Would the program be too expensive?

3. Would it prove politically unfeasible?

The answers? No, no, and maybe.

Reductions in working hours were limited across the board. “The ‘laziness’ contention is just not supported by our findings,” the chief data analyst of the Denver experiment said. “There is not anywhere near the mass defection the prophets of doom predicted.” The decline in paid work averaged 9% per family, and in every state it was mostly twentysomethings and women with young children who worked less.

Later research showed that even 9% was probably exaggerated.

Read more about the 1970s experiments on Vox.com. In the original study, this was calculated on the basis of self-reported income, but when the data was compared with official government records, it turned out that a significant portion of earnings had gone unreported. After correcting for this discrepancy, the researchers discovered that the number of hours worked had scarcely decreased at all.

The "declines in hours of paid work were undoubtedly compensated in part by other useful activities, such as search for better jobs or work in the home,” noted the Seattle experiment’s concluding report. For example, one mother who had dropped out of high school worked less in order to earn a degree in psychology and get a job as a researcher. Another woman took acting classes; her husband began composing music. “We’re now self-sufficient, income-earning artists,” she told the researchers. Among youth included in the experiment, almost all the hours not spent on paid work went into more education. Among the New Jersey subjects, the rate of high school graduations rose 30%.

I'm not entirely convinced that this is a workable idea, but as

As a reminder though, the assumption of my post was that Elon and his AI crowd are justified in believing AGI is around the corner -- that he can produce a cheap robot that can walk into any place of business and fulfill the jobs of any employee. And so assuming there are no jobs left, is there any good choice aside from UBI?

Emphasis added.

[canpakes]

This is different. We won't have any jobs, and THEY will determine how much we get. I have no idea how that will work.

I think even more people would be faking some kind of disability than we see now under such a system.

Not to point out the obvious, but in a system where no one has jobs, what would it matter?

[Doctor Steuss]

One of the glaring things to me in Elon's proposal is -- where does he anticipate the money for a UBI to come from? Is he willing to advocate that his own businesses, and personal fortune, have increased taxes levied against them? Or is he advocating full-on Communism, and wants the government to be the owners of the means of production?

Seems to me, his ketamine brain might have lost sight of the fact that he's either going to have to stop avoiding taxes or he'll have to be ok with the government seizing his businesses.

My guess is he probably had a moment of drug-induced lucidity (sans the full thought-process), and realized we're potentially on a "let them eat cake" path, and at some point his son will be too old to keep using as a human shield.